Infojustice – US, Canadian & Mexican Law Professors, Academics And Policy Experts: NAFTA Must Include Fair Use, Safe Harbors

Reprinted from infojustice.org:

New research shows that balanced copyright policies have positive effects on innovation, creativity, and returns to firms in the information sector

WASHINGTON – Today, over seventy international copyright law experts called for NAFTA and other trade negotiators to support a set of balanced copyright principles. The experts urge trade  negotiators to support policies like fair use, safe harbor provisions, and other exceptions and limitations that permit and encourage access to knowledge, flourishing creativity, and innovation. Signatories include preeminent intellectual property professors and experts from law schools, think tanks, and public interest organizations in the US, Canada, and Mexico, as well as Argentina, Australia, China, Ireland, and Switzerland.

“Most people don’t realize that everyday tools like social media, search engines, and internet archives rely on balanced copyright policies like fair use and safe harbor provisions. In a world that increasingly relies on the internet, global citizens need to access digital content for education, research, and culture. NAFTA and other trade agreements should not export a one-sided copyright policy, but instead reflect the digital realities of the 21st century,” said Sean Flynn, intellectual property professor at the American University Washington College of Law and Associate Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP).

Signers lay out the following copyright principles to ensure consumers’ digital rights:

• Protect and promote copyright balance, including fair use
• Provide technology-enabling exceptions, such as for search engines and text- and data-mining
• Require safe harbor provisions to protect online platforms from users’ infringement
• Ensure legitimate exceptions for anti-circumvention, such as documentary filmmaking, cybersecurity research, and allowing assistive reading technologies for the blind
• Adhere to existing multilateral commitments on copyright term
• Guarantee proportionality and due process in copyright enforcement

Read the full post on infojustice.org here.